The Journal of Adventure, Mystery and Melodrama in American Popular Culture of the Early 20th Century!

In the summer of 2002, long-time friends Ed Hulse, Mark Trost and Rick Scheckman launched Blood ‘n’ Thunder, an amateur journal for aficionados of adventure, mystery, and melodrama in American popular culture of the early 20th century. This little fanzine—initially Ed, Mark and Rick didn’t think of it as anything more—was designed to appeal to anybody who shared their enthusiasm for fanciful storytelling that teemed with lost races, death rays, trap doors, buried treasures, secret formulas, hidden passages, mad scientists, gangster chieftains, Oriental masterminds, hooded villains, distressed damsels and intrepid heroes. During the last century’s first half, such ingredients were routinely added to books, movies, dime novels, comic strips, and radio dramas—but especially to pulp magazines, the coverage of which has traditionally dominated Blood ‘n’ Thunder’s pages.

Ed Hulse, a professional writer and editor, maintains a high standard for submissions to BnT (as the zine became known), eschewing gushy, superficial fanboy pieces in favor of incisive, well-researched articles and essays. In addition to securing contributions from knowledgeable fans, Ed has run material by novelists, academics, and pop-culture historians including Ron Goulart, Will Murray, and Francis M. Nevins, to name just a few. The award-winning BnT continues to attract top-flight editorial talent and its circulation has grown steadily over the last decade. Each quarterly issue boasts more than a hundred pages stuffed with fascinating articles and reprints of long-forgotten pulp yarns.